The Newest Addition
by pupeez4eva
Summary: Wherein Sasuke steals toddler Itachi from an alternate dimension and refuses to give him back, and Kakashi is tired of dealing with this crap.


Kakashi wondered, not for the first time, why he had ever agreed to take on a Genin team.

Most days he wasn't sure who caused him the most grief — it was honestly a toss up between Naruto and Sasuke. On one hand, Naruto had never become a missing nin, attacked the village, and tried to kill multiple kage…but on the other hand, he _was_ Naruto.

Gazing at the scene in front of him — Sasuke, staring flatly at him, while a toddler clutched at his arm with one hand, and happily chewed on a stick of dango with the other — he decided that Sasuke was definitely worse.

"Explain this to me again," he said.

Sasuke sighed, as if he was the one being inconvenienced. "I told you. I found myself in an alternate dimension. I left left, finished the mission you'd given me, came back to report — "

"The alternate dimension part," Kakashi interrupted, while mournfully reminding himself that if he'd never accepted the job of Hokage, _Tsunade_ would be dealing with the current situation and not him. "Let's focus on that for a bit."

Sasuke cocked his head to the side, and gave him a barely perceptible nod.

"You ended up there."

"Yes."

"You left."

"Yes, I told you that."

Kakashi turned his attention back to the child, who blinked innocently back at him. "And you decided to, what? Bring someone back with you?"

Sasuke scowled slightly. "Well what was I supposed to do? Leave him there?"

 _"Yes_ Sasuke," Kakashi said, "that's exactly what you were supposed to do. Instead you brought an alternate version of your brother into our universe, and risked damaging the timeline of some other dimension."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

Oh God, Kakashi had definitely made a mistake taking on students.

Itachi, who couldn't have been more than two or three, noticed him staring, and cocked his head to the side curiously. It was honestly kind of adorable, but Kakashi liked to think that he was made of stronger stuff, and he wasn't going to melt at the sight of a cute toddler.

Apparently the same couldn't be said for Sasuke, because then they wouldn't be dealing with this in the first place.

He turned his attention back to his student. "Sasuke, you need to give him back."

Sasuke didn't even hesitate. "No."

"He's not from here. He has a home — in a different dimension. You told me it was exactly like our reality."

Sasuke shrugged. "The timelines didn't match up completely — they were still a few years in the past — but from the looks of it, yes, it looks pretty much how it should be considering the time period."

Kakashi nodded. "Then you need to send him back. You realise he has parents? A home?"

Itachi chose that moment to speak up. "I want to stay," he said, which came out slightly muffled since his mouth was full of dango. "Sasuke-nii is really nice, and let's me eat lots of dango."

Kakashi eyed the stick of half-eaten dango, and wondered just how much sugar Sasuke had been allowing him to eat. His former student had zero knowledge on how to raise a kid, and Itachi was showing slightly more expression than usual (then again, Kakashi's only real encounters with Itachi at this age had been when he'd seen the kid trailing after Obito, and he'd been too focused on ignoring Obito and being a broody loner to remember much about that).

Sasuke patted Itachi's head gently, and then gazed pointedly at Kakashi.

 _Goddammit_. "Sasuke — "

Sasuke leaned in closer. "He's not going back," he said, his voice low. "That place is almost identical to our world. You know what'll happen in a few years time. It doesn't matter if he isn't _my_ brother — if I can spare any version of Itachi that pain, then I will."

 _'Yes,'_ Kakashi thought, _'and what about everything that could potentially go wrong because of this?'_

…Well, he wasn't the Hokage of _that_ village, was he?

"Fine," he said, "keep him."

"…Okay?" Sasuke actually sounded slightly confused. "I wasn't asking for permission."

 _'Brat.'_

This was going to be a hard one to explain, but Kakashi was leaving to Sasuke to explain where he'd come across a toddler version of his dead, missing-nin brother. He had enough going on with all this goddamn paperwork.

(Again _who_ said becoming Hokage was a good idea? He was handing the hat over to Naruto as soon as possible).


End file.
